Stanford Evo 2 AI model generates phages against E. coli

Stanford researchers have synthesised nearly 300 phages from DNA sequences produced by the Evo 2 generative AI model. Laboratory testing narrowed the group to 16 phages that showed particularly strong E. coli-killing activity.

The work centres on bacteriophage ΦX174, pronounced “FYE-ex-1-7-4”. Brian Hie, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and Dieter Schwarz Foundation Stanford Data Science Faculty Fellow, created Evo 2 with bioengineering graduate student Samuel King leading the experimental work described in the paper.

Evo 2 takes phage genomes into the laboratory

Evo 2 generates new DNA sequences from a small starting snippet of a phage genome. The researchers asked the model to produce an entire ΦX174 genome in one left-to-right pass.

“In this case, we wanted the model to generate the entire genome end-to-end in a single left-to-right pass. We didn’t add anything,” Hie said. The process generated thousands of candidate genomes before the team selected sequences for chemical synthesis and laboratory testing.

ΦX174 o...